What Is Omnisphere 2

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What is Omnisphere? Omnisphere is an award-winning, remarkably versatile multi-timbral Power Synthesizer, based on Spectrasonics latest synthesis and hi-definition sampling engine called STEAM. It features a massive 40+GB core library, extensive synthesis capabilities, a fully featured arpeggiator with a unique Groove-Lock system for syncing with Stylus RMX grooves, over thirty built-in effects and much, much more! Omnisphere is incredible, but it’s not a requirement. There are many great “soft (ware)-synths” out on the market including Apple MainStage, Native Instruments Komplete, etc. These all have great sounds and features. Most of the time I end up using all of these in combination with Omnisphere. Omnisphere 2 Installation. Step 1: Connect the Omnisphere installation drive to a USB port. Open the drive 'Spectrasonics Omnisphere' and double-click the file 'Omnisphere 2 Installation.url.' Step 2: Log in to your Spectrasonics user account and select the 'DOWNLOAD' button to download the current installers to your PC.

A flagship synthesizer gets updated with an improved arpeggiator and many more profiles for hardware integration.

by Rob Mitchell, May 2019

Omnisphere 2.6 features a new and improved arpeggiator and support for many more hardware synthesizers. Over 1,600 new patches have been added, it has over 500 DSP waveforms and it now includes over 14,000 sounds to choose from. Before I go into any depth on the new features in 2.6, I thought I’d briefly describe some basics of Omnisphere in case you are not familiar with it. Each patch (part) can have up to four layers, effects and a dedicated arp. For each layer, you can select between sample sources or waveforms for standard synthesis with optional unison or the Harmonia feature which multiplies each layer’s oscillator capabilities. The sample sources can also be manipulated with the synthesis features. You can easily copy and paste the settings between the layers. Several filter types are available with serial and parallel settings. There are 48 slots for setting up modulation in the mod matrix section, eight LFOs, twelve envelopes, waveshaping, ring modulation, FM and granular synthesis can further enhance your patches. A huge selection of effects are on board to give your patches just the right edginess or polish that they might need. A Multi is a higher level than the part that can use a combination of patches in different configurations with up to eight parts simultaneously. The re-sizable display makes it a joy to use on any size of monitor.

Omnisphere requires a 2.4 GHz or higher CPU and 8+ GB of RAM. For the PC it requires Windows 7 (or higher OS) 64-bit, and for the Mac you’ll need OS X 10.11 El Capitan (or higher). It works with AU, AAX, VST 2.4 compatible hosts and there is a standalone version.

This review will mainly lean towards what is new for version 2.6. Here is an earlier review we published for version 2.3 which covers some other details: https://soundbytesmag.net/omnisphere23review/

Arpeggiator

With the 2.6 update Spectrasonics has added eight additional pattern modes for the arpeggiator giving it a total of nineteen modes. Those modes include Chord, Up, Down, Up and Down, As Played, Stairs, Join, and many others. Here are three examples of some of the newer modes: The Join mode plays the low note, then the highest note, and continues alternating between notes until they reach each other (hence “join”) with the intervals between the notes closing in towards the middle. The Spread mode is similar to Join, but it works the other way around; alternating low and high, but this time gradually working their way outward (versus inward). The Stairs mode is a rising pattern which rises upward in a similar way to the shape of stairs: two notes upward and then one note down, and it continues that pattern repeatedly.

The three included Trigger modes will determine how and when the arp is restarted. The modes are Legato (the arp pattern continues as long as notes are played legato), Song Position (depends on the host settings) and Note (restarts pattern with each new note played). You can set up to a four octave range, change the speed of the arp, and adjust the length of the events you’ve configured in the arp. Other features include a swing amount control and a velocity slider. The velocity slider controls the balance between the step velocity settings in the pattern and the actual velocity of the keys that are played. To set the time value for the steps, you use the Clock setting. From there you may choose the timing value you’d like, such as 1/1, which would mean each step equals a quarter note, 1/2 equals a half note, and 1/4 is a quarter note, etc. Triplet and dotted settings are also included.

Each pattern can have up to 32 steps. To set the number of the steps, you just drag the small blue bar (below the sequence of numbers) until you have the desired amount. The button above of each step number will turn it on or off, or you can click above the button to set the velocity amount (drag up and down to set) and that will also enable the step. To transpose each step, you just click on the 0 (if you started with a blank arp setting) that’s above whichever step you want change.

When you click right above each step it will bring up a menu where you may select from a number of settings. These can be added per-step, and include Transpose, Slide, Chord voicings (with inversions!) and Hi or Lo. Hi ignores the arp and plays the highest note played for that step, and Lo does the same thing for the lowest note played. The Step Dividers will divide each step into various multiples of themselves (i.e. doubles, triples, etc.) and the velocity amount of each division can be set to rise or fall over time.

The new Capture function will grab the notes that you played along with any arp settings you are using at the same time. You can drag the file it generates to another track in your DAW for use with other synth/sampler plugins you may have. The length of the recording can be set to 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 bars and it automatically starts with the first note you play. It worked perfectly for me when I tried it myself. This is how it looks after I dragged the recorded arp sequence over into my DAW:

Hardware Integration

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One of the most exciting features added in version 2.5 was the hardware integration. It allows you to use your hardware synthesizer as a controller to interface with Omnisphere. It isn’t just a MIDI-learn type of setting, as it goes much deeper than that. Each profile is primed and ready to work specifically with that particular synthesizer. You can take the original synth’s sound (or at least a very close likeness of it) to new heights of creativity using the many modulation capabilities and effects available in Omnisphere. I mention a “close likeness” because the way this works depends on how the Spectrasonics programming wizards configured it for each synth. They went into great detail for each of them, and added some new features to make Omnisphere work in much the same way as the hardware.

One such feature that was added in 2.6 is the Bias control. With this addition, it can match the same bias settings that the Roland D-50 synthesizer has. There are eight bias controls per part and you can set them to a certain key (the Bias Point) which affects the other keys above or below it in a linear fashion. It is similar to key tracking, but is more customizable and can be assigned to any of Omnisphere’s available modulation targets. A Left/Right setting lets you pick which side of the keyboard is affected on either side of the Bias point. The range of modulation can also be multiplied by 4 using the 4X button.

Utorrent download. Most patches included use more than one layer per patch. Some will use a combination of samples in one layer along with Omnisphere’s powerful synthesis features in another layer. In this latest update, Omnisphere now includes support for over 60 hardware synthesizers and hundreds of new patches.

Here is the synth hardware support list at the time of my review (there may be others in the works).

Even if you don’t have one of those hardware synths, you can still load the patches that were made to integrate with it and access the modeled waveforms and/or samples. For this part of the review I thought I’d cover my experiences while using the Moog Sub Phatty.

It’s very easy to get started. Up at the top of the GUI is a small button labeled HW. Clicking that will give you a menu with a long list of hardware profiles. For my setup, I chose Moog Sub Phatty from that list and it was smooth sailing after that. There are several patches to choose from in Omnisphere (under the category name of SPHAT) that you can tweak or you might want to start from scratch with just basic settings. The controls on the hardware work well with the software and I didn’t run into any issues. Say you want to switch the waveform for the LFO. No problem there. When you change it on the Sub Phatty it switches over to the same waveform in Omnisphere. The same goes for selecting the waveform type for the oscillator, and many others. If you change filter cutoff or the ADSR envelope settings, it automatically bounces you over to the correct display in Omnisphere and changes the corresponding setting.

I noticed that within the Default Sub Phatty patch (first patch when you load the profile) there is a Moog Modular Raw Triangle sample which is used in place of the sub-oscillator in the Sub Phatty. Turning up the sub-oscillator control on the Sub Phatty increases the level for the sample in the layer. The only issue I had with that is the Sub Phatty uses a square waveform for the sub-oscillator, but it still sounds good anyway. Another thing I noticed is that none of the patches in the SPHAT category use the modeled Sub Phatty waveforms in Omnisphere, but around 90% of the patches are using the modeled Moog Modular 4X Shapes wavetable instead. It seems they designed them that way because the regular Sub Phatty modeled waveforms only blend between two different shapes. The Modular 4X type can blend between the same (or at least very similar) waveform shapes that are available on the Sub Phatty, so in that way it is much closer to feel of the original. I know it is supposed to be in the likeness of the hardware and not an emulation of sorts, but I was a little surprised when I found a patch called “Yearning Chips” in the SPHAT category which uses none of the Moog labeled waveforms at all.

When I tried using the preset buttons located over the left side of Sub Phatty, I thought that maybe it would switch to similar sounding patches in Omnisphere, but it didn’t. Then I remembered that there is a part in the setup instructions that mentions for the preset buttons to work you have to assign them with the MIDI Program Change Learn function.

One other thing I wanted to test was using the hidden functions that the Sub Phatty has. The first one I tried was the filter slope setting. The results were a little strange, as I selected (in order) 6dB/octave, 12dB/octave, 18dB/octave and finally the classic Moog 4-pole 24dB/octave setting on the Sub Phatty. This is done by going into what they call Shift mode, and then you press the Bank 2 and Patch 1 buttons at the same time. Then you just press one of the four lowest keys (C, C#, D, D#) to change to one of the different slope settings I mentioned earlier. So what result did I get? When I pressed the low C key it changed to the HPF Power 24dB, C# gave me the Bandpass Power 24dB, the D key switched it to the LPF Power 12dB, and the D# changed it to the LPF Power 24dB. Anyway, C should have been 6dB/octave, C# normally changes it to 12dB/octave, D is for 18dB/octave slope, and D# is for the 4-pole 24dB/octave setting. Long story short, I ended up writing to Spectrasonics support. They promptly wrote me back that same day and told me the hidden functions of the Sub Phatty are not mapped out. I’m glad I reached out to them since it saved me lots of time and frustration. However, the fact that they are not mapped should be documented somewhere.

As for the other sounds that are available, the Roland D-50 patches hold a special place in my heart as I used the actual synth hardware while attending college. They had a D-50 in the music studio along with (among other items) some samplers, drum machines, many microphones and cords, a mixing console, patch bay and an Atari 1040ST. When I first heard the D-50 I was amazed by its sound and wanted to use it for nearly everything. The patches in the Omnisphere 2.6 update are very close to the original sounds you may remember from way back when, that is, if you’ve ever heard the real deal. Even if you didn’t use the D-50 yourself, it has been used in many movie and TV soundtracks, and major artists have featured it on their albums. It was definitely one popular synth, that’s for sure! Don’t get me wrong, there are many great patches from other synths included as well. I found myself returning to the Alesis Andromeda, Sequential OB-6, and Nord Wave patches more often than some of the others. I can’t imagine how much work Spectrasonics put in to create all the sampled sounds, modeled waveforms/wavetables and patches, as well as the hardware configuration settings. It must have been an enormous task, but I am sure it was a labor of love along the way. Hopefully they will have more releases for the hardware integration (along with additional patches, of course) down the road.

Conclusion

I was very impressed by Omnisphere’s easy to use interface. Once I knew where everything was located (there is a small learning curve) it was easy to navigate to the various sections of the synth. It is very intuitive and a joy to work with. It is easily one of simplest to use (yet most powerful!) synths I have ever encountered. With that said, for such a small update (0.1 increment) it represents a huge undertaking in man-hours for the craftsmanship of preset design and hardware integration. The only improvements I can think of are the ability to use the arpeggiator as a mod source and maybe a few more options for the granular synthesis. Though I have never seen Omnisphere on any type of sale (unless I didn’t get the memo?), the updates are such a huge value that it easily makes the full price asked for well worth the cost. Well done Spectrasonics!

Omnisphere 2.6 retails for $499 USD you can get more info on Omnisphere here:

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Omnisphere and serum: Two giants of the software synth world.

We’ve all wondered how they compare to each other, and today, after thorough analysis of both, we will come up with a winner.

It is, however, important to note that this article isn’t an attempt to determine which one of these beastly VSTs are ‘the best.’

What is actually the best is far too subjective for any one person to ascertain.

What you are about to read is merely a comparison of 2 industry leading virtual instruments in order to help you understand the differences and similarities between them.

If you’re on the fence about purchasing either one, or if you own both and struggle with which one to use for a particular task, you could benefit from the information in this article.

If you’re not familiar with either of these, we strongly recommend checking them out.

You should also check out splice, where you can try out serum and other plugins for free for 3 days and then pay a monthly fee starting at 4.99$.

We’ll start with the most obvious differences, then we will break things down into various sections:

Obvious Differences

Omnisphere 2 is an 8-part multitimbral VSTi, meaning you can play up to 8 different sounds at once with one instantiation.

Serum can only play one sound at a time, so if you want to play more than that, you’ll have to have to use a different instantiation for each different sound you use from it.

Spectrasonics hasn’t provided a demo of Omnisphere 2 yet, so there is no way to test it out unless you buy it. A demo version of Serum is available with Splice.

To get more acquainted with each synth, please check out the links below:

Oscillators

Omnisphere 2 comes withover 400 new waveforms each of which is a morphing wavetable.

Ethnic instruments and unusual sound sources like a burning piano are also included and can be used as oscillators.

Additionally, you can add your own sounds and use those as oscillators or mangle them in the granular synthesis section.

However, when compared to other dedicated granular synths like Mangle or PadShop, Omnisphere 2 falls a bit short in terms of editing features.

Serum on the other hand, comes with 144 wavetables and also gives you the ability to draw waveforms or load your own sounds and use them as oscillators.

Aside from being an “advanced wavetable synth”, Serum is also capable of performing additive and VA synthesis with classic waveforms (saw, square etc.) + a sub oscillator + noise oscillator.

Because of the array of waveforms and synthesis techniques that can be applied in both synths, they both could very well be referred to as modern hybrid synthesizers.

Filters

Serum has a variety of filter types. All the filters from Xfer’s LFOTool are included in addition to some new ones like Flangers, Phasers and the dirty sounding French LPF.

There are also Dual Filter types allowing you to morph between filter types.

Omnisphere 2 boasts a more flexible filter engine and 8 new filters giving you the ability to create your own filter sound with stereo control, drive and a host of other parameters to further customize your filters.

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Also, it now includes all of the filters from GForce Software’s virtual synth, “impOSCar”.

Modulators

Personally, my favorite thing about Serum’s modulators is how easy it is to drag and drop a modulation source to a destination.

This makes for a much faster workflow when creating or editing complex a patch.

Then there are the drawable LFOs, Envelopes and Macros which, depending on your preference, are more fun to play with than mousing around with percentages or virtual knobs.

Omnisphere’s Modulation Matrix is unbelievably massive and flexible!

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Almost every parameter can be modulated and there are a plethora of modulation sources and targets.

All 4 Effect Racks’ parameters, all the granular parameters, all the FM parameters, numerous parameters in the arpeggiator and envelopes can all be modulated by a multitude of sources.

But with all this modulation power, there is no drag and drop ability.

Effects

In addition to Serum’s classic synth effects and advanced effects such as a multiband compressor, Serum can be used as a dedicated FX processor as well.

Off the top of my head, the only other synths I can think of that have this feature are Native Instruments Absynth 5, FM8 and Reaktor 6.

The results of running an audio source through an effect with synthesizer parameters can be extremely inspiring and a lot of fun!

Omnisphere 2 has a wider variety of effects.

Vintage effects like echoes, choruses and compressors as well as various reverb types are included.

And remember, all of the parameters in each effect can be modulated. This does come at the cost of higher CPU usage, however.

I’d be curious to see what kinds of sounds could be generated if Omnisphere 2 was able to be used as a dedicated FX processor, but that feature isn’t available.

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Overall Winner

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I think Omnisphere 2 has a better sound library and is well-rounded as far as sound selection thanks to some of the best sound designers of our time, Eric Persing and Diego Stocco. Therefore, it takes the prize.

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Serum may have a more flexible wavetable engine and deeper sound design capabilities with the wavetable editor, formulas and additive engine.